to the book of 1 Corinthians. Now, I'm going to tell you this, if you're visiting with us for the first time, I have great respect for you. It takes a concerted effort on a Sunday when you have a day off, especially if you're visiting relatives. to show up at a church, you know, get all duded up and looking pretty, and show up at a church where you don't know anybody except your relative, and listen to somebody you've never heard before, okay? So, I'm already commending you for being here this morning and appreciate your presence with us. Then, secondarily, you have found a church that unapologetically teaches and preaches the Bible verse by verse, line by line, word for word. And so, I'm just gonna tell you, we're in 1 Corinthians 5 today. and we're going to talk about a topic that might feel a little uncomfortable. But we're gonna do that unapologetically because I believe God has a message that is appropriate for us today as God's people, no matter what church we're a part of, no matter where we're from, whether you're visiting or not, this is the God-ordained, appointed message that he has for you today. So let's embrace it and let's roll with it and let's just see what God has for us today. Some of you are like, oh man, If the preacher's prefacing it with that, what do we got going on today? Don't worry, God's got a good message for us today. Let's go ahead, as we think about the message of God's word, let's go ahead and read the text. This is the most important thing I'm gonna say. There's a lot of stuff I got written on my iPad that I've scripted and manuscripted and prayed over all week long, but the most important thing I'm gonna say today is what God's word says. I'm also gonna tell you this, and I'm gonna say you're welcome ahead of time. I had broken this passage into two messages, but I was able to consolidate it into one. So we're going to be in the entire chapter today. So let's look at 1 Corinthians 5. We're going to read verses 1 to 13. It's actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and such sexual immorality is not even named among the Gentiles. that a man has his father's wife, and you are puffed up, and have not rather mourned that he who has done this deed might be taken away from among you. For I indeed, as absent in the body, but present in spirit, have already judged, as though I were present. I judged him who has so done this deed, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you are gathered together, along with my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of our Lord Jesus. Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Therefore purge out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed, Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. Therefore, let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people, yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of this world. But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother who is sexually immoral, covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, a drunkard, an extortioner, not even to eat with such a person. For what have I to do with judging those also who are outside? Do you not judge those who are inside? but those who are outside God judges. Therefore, put away from yourselves the evil person. May God add a blessing to the reading of his word and may that blessing include helping us to understand it. All right, let's pray to that end this morning, shall we? Our great God and heavenly father, we lift up this text to you this morning. This is your holy word. You wrote it, you inspired it, you breathed it out through your servant, Paul, to a specific church in a real point in time, and it has real application for Crossroad Baptist Church in 2025. And Lord, we need your help to understand it. The Scripture says that it is a spiritually understood book, but we have the Spirit of God, He indwells us, and Scripture is not of a private interpretation. It is given to us through holy men of God that were moved by the Holy Spirit and that Holy Spirit can help us to understand it. And so Lord, we ask specifically that not only will your word not return empty this morning, not only will it accomplish its purpose in our hearts, but you would help us to comprehend its truths from start to finish. And Lord, we pray these things in the matchless name of Jesus and God's people said, amen. All right, so you can see the title of the message sneaking over my shoulder here, Living or Letting the Gospel Protect. That's the title of the message, Letting the Gospel Protect. And what we're thinking about as a way of protection, this sub-theme, the right perspective about sin for the right response towards sin. This is what the text is teaching us. When we have the right perspective about sin, we will have the right response towards sin. All right, now there's two things that we're going to talk about from a big picture standpoint. There's sin, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And there's the sinner. for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And though they go hand in glove, when we talk about them, we need to remember we are them. All of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And though this text deals with a specific issue that was apparently a big problem in this early church, Paul is very careful in his presentation to make sure that the right perspective leads to the right response. And if we pay close attention to the text, we're gonna see his gentle nature as we work through it, okay? And so the way we're looking at this text this morning is we're gonna ask based on this context, if we're to let the gospel protect, and the right perspective about sin is going to lead us to the right response towards sin. And if that is a sub-theme of this passage, then we need to ask the question, what does proper gospel protection look like? Does that make sense? What does it look like? All right, now, I'm not gonna re-preach a message that I preached this last summer from Matthew 18, but I'd encourage you to go back there. A lot of people refer to Matthew 18 as the premier church discipline passage. However, it's only the second time the word church is used in the Bible, or in the New Testament, well, in the Bible. It's used by Jesus himself. He's already had made a pronunciation in chapter 16 that he would build his church and that the gates of Hades would not prevail against it. He'd already said that his church is a group, an entity of organized believers that are bought by him, bought by his blood, bought with a price, and they are very, very, very important to him. So in Matthew 18, he lays out the way to protect those that are his own. So I don't really like referring to it as church discipline, because that's the classic old and ancient theological idea, because discipline in our day and age often has a negative connotation. I like to call it protection. And I think that we understand that concept. I've used this illustration before, but how many of you moms, when your kids were really little, either avoided going to the Grand Canyon altogether, or when you did, you thought of very creative ways to make sure your kids stayed nice and close. whether that was strapping them to your body. You remember at least back in the 90s when my brother was a kid, the OG human leash, that was a thing. I looked a little bit awkward, but it was a thing. Human leash attached to your belt, attached to the back of the kids so they didn't fall or run away. Boy, I wish my parents had used that for my brother. He used to hide in, we'd go to the mall, and he would literally hide in the clothing store. He would like hide inside the racks, and my mom would get terrified. And so the rest of the family would be walking around, Tyler, Tyler, you know, calling him. And he'd be hidden for like 30 minutes. I'm not kidding. And then you'd get like right up on the clothes racks that he was hiding, and you'd hear this little, hee, hee, hee, little giggle. And then he'd jump out, and he just thought he was, the greatest thing since sliced bread. And the rest of us were having a heart attack. So let's just say that mom protected him by teaching him how to properly respond in a mall and not to hide in the clothing rack. So church protection is what we're talking about. And this passage is gonna help us answer what does that look like? How do we protect our own? How do we identify our own versus those who aren't part of the body of Christ. That's what he's asking and that's how he's going to answer this question. All right? So let's back up and say the first four chapters of 1 Corinthians have had one big idea and we summarized it last week. In fact, the theme of the book that is strongly and thematically conveyed is that the gospel, the gospel is God's means to do God's work on earth in this arena. That's what we've already talked about. The gospel is what God uses to break down societal walls of separation, ethnic walls, gender walls, social walls, economic walls, any wall you can put up, right? The gospel just breaks through it, right? It brings this motley crew of people from all over the place together under one banner, one faith, one Lord, one Father, one baptism, one Savior, Jesus Christ. And we can be from anywhere, from everywhere, We can have specific ethnic characteristics or traits, but when we come to faith in Christ, we are all part of one family, one body, a brick in God's building, a tree in God's orchard, a plant in his garden, a member of his army. Remember, we went through this last year, all right? So this togetherness, this unity that the gospel brings is a major theme for the book of 1 Corinthians. And we saw that in the first four chapters. Paul's like, why are you guys arguing about who brought you to faith in Jesus? Stop talking about Paul, Peter, Cephas, Jesus. We're all one in Christ. Do you remember these arguments he's having? Hey, why are you saying that you need the world's wisdom? The gospel is all the wisdom you need. Why do you say you need strength and eloquent words? The gospel is the power of God. These are all themes he's been talking about in 1 Corinthians thus far. So we discovered in the first four chapters that the gospel unifies the most unlikely and eclectic group of people. Furthermore, we noted that this redeemed and unified group of people must therefore live united in Jesus to reveal the unifying power and wisdom of the gospel to those who are within the church and outside the church. The first four chapters we studied have consistently testified to these truths and called this motley church to embrace the gospel. God's church must have the gospel properly preached, properly received, and properly responded to. That's what makes our growth in godliness possible. And so, at the core of this gospel message is the finished work of Jesus Christ, to fully save sinners to God's glory. And that is the unifying work that he calls all believers to participate in. God calls all of us to participate. Why would we go every second Saturday out in neighborhoods, walk in Arizona and drop little cards on people's doors that point them to the gospel because this is the unifying work. This is the thing that God is doing on earth today. He is building his church one life at a time and he uses his gospel to do it. And so, in short, or excuse me, this would necessitate rejecting worldly wisdom, refusing to create factions in the church over personalities and preferences. It means saying no to sinful practices that condemn and separate us from Jesus. In short, all true believers are called to embrace a life that embodies who we really are, which leads to a life that eternally matters. Living a life that means embracing our true gospel identity. This is who we are. This is how we identify. Don't be ashamed to say, yeah, I'm a Christian. By the way, Christian means little Christ. And even though I'm a poor representation of Jesus, he's my Lord and Savior, right? That's what it means to be a Christian, someone who's like Jesus. And I do my best to walk in the spirit to be like him. And so that's where we left off last week. with a summary of the first four chapters, we are to imitate Jesus by imitating the gospel living of our spiritually mature mentors. That's what Paul messed with. That's all he said in chapter four. Gospel growth then starts with receiving and claiming our gospel identity, and it continues through gospel imitation. So it's not enough to say, yeah, I'm a Christian, right? But now I have to live as if I'm a Christian. You see that? Right? I wouldn't make any sense if you were employed by, say, Luke Air Force Base. And you say, yeah, I'm an employee of the United States government. You know, I'm in the Air Force. But you never show up to work. And you most certainly don't wear the uniform. How long do you think you'd last, Caleb? Yeah, there you go, right? Probably less in the Marine Corps, right, brother? Maybe an hour after your drill sergeant barked you out of the Marine Corps barracks, you'd be gone on a bus just like that. And that's the point. Yet how many of us think that just identifying as a Christian with my words is all that's necessary? And that's what Paul is dealing with in this passage. Someone who says, well, I'm a believer, but lives like they're not. And so, we were told last week that following the right leaders means following our local pastors who are living out the gospel in humble, obedient action. This week, We were told, or we are told, that while yielding the right results, protecting those who are in God's family, deepening the unity of the Spirit through the Word of God preached and lived out, and walking in love, which produces Spirit-filled living, that is what, in a nutshell, it means to imitate Christ. And so, Chapter 5, that's where we are. It begins with a transition. It's declared, we've already been declared, that declaring unity is the groundwork of what the gospel properly preached, properly received, and properly responded to produces. So unity is what he's after. Unity comes from the gospel properly preached, properly received, and properly responded to. So from here onward, for the rest of the book, the book is gonna give various life circumstances that demand a proper gospel response from someone who's learned to be a gospel imitator. That's what the rest of the first Corinthians is about. And it's some pretty serious stuff. It's some stuff that's actually very appropriate to 2025, even though it is a really ancient document. We're gonna find that. So today we will see how a gospel imitator should view and respond to clearly immoral activity. All right, clearly immoral activity. And remember my caveat, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We're not coming at this as judges who lord it over, but as those who see our brothers overtaken in a fault and restore them to God's grace. And that's the process. So ultimately the principle taught is that being a gospel imitator requires having the right perspective about sin which leads to the right response towards sin. Now this lets the gospel protect individuals within God's family and the whole family all at once. God wants you to protect his church with the right attitude, and the right actions. Now, we're going to see, and I'm going to try to give some illustrations that should be clear, but Paul gives some illustrations in this text. Some of them are kind of old, like, you know, leaven and the feast of unleavened bread. We don't practice that today. We have practices and we understand it, but he's going to give some illustrations that should help us understand this, and I'm going to try to illustrate it with some modern ideas as well to help us understand what's happening in this text. So we're going to see ways in which the text compares and contrasts gospel protection of those who are God's true church. So I'm going to look at comparing and contrasting ideas in the context. First of all, these ways will reveal how God protects, his protection employs the right perspective and right response. So we're going to deal first of all with the right perspective. That right perspective, gospel protection displays, the right perspective that produces the right attitude towards sin. So that's the first point. All right? And I'm actually going to deal with, instead of going through the whole passage once and line by line, because he deals with these two topics in two sections, and he points at them from different directions. So I'm going to deal with this one first and jump around to the second one in a moment. And that's not the right one. That's not the right one. I'm sorry. I got the right one listed later, but gospel protection displays the right attitude towards sin, and that's where we're going with this. All right, so first of all, what do we have going on here? All right, and what is the first attitude that we are supposed to have? What is he comparing and contrasting? All right, first of all, he's comparing and contrasting the attitude of mourning versus arrogance. Mourning versus arrogance. Now let's talk about the issue, all right? First of all, what in the world is he going at? He deals with the issue of sexual immorality within the church that is not even named among the Gentiles. The idea of named means the idea that it's not, it might be practiced, but nobody talks about it. It's so bad. that it wouldn't even be polite conversation outside of a church setting. And yet the church family of God here at Corinth was allowing this to happen. We don't have to go back, we don't have time to go back to Leviticus where this is being discussed or where we understand what he's talking about specifically. But he says what's happening is that a man, a member of the church, has his father's wife. And that, the verb has, is a euphemism for he is having sexual relations and he has an ongoing, regular, habitual sexual relationship with his father's wife. And the word used for wife here linking to Leviticus means his father's, his stepmother, all right? So this would be a second or a third wife of his father. It's not his biological mother, but it is his father's wife nonetheless, all right? It's a pretty embarrassing topic. I understand that, but that's what's going on here. And so Paul is telling the believers, look, you need to have a right response to this situation. And in a greater principle, we the church should have a right response to sin inside our church and how that affects the outsiders looking inside. That's the point here. That's what he's making. So, he says that instead of mourning, this is verse 20, verse 2, and you are puffed up. The word for puffed up is the word for arrogant. So mourning versus arrogance. You see that? It's the idea of arrogance. So their attitude toward this is, hey, we're all Christians. Our response should just be, you know, live and let live, right? You know, that's just the way we should deal with this situation. And Paul's saying, look, no, no, that's an arrogant situation. That's a self-centered situation. What you need to do is mourn. He says, you mourn, notice how he phrases it, that he who has done this deed might be taken away from among you. All right, so a couple of things here. What does it mean to mourn? What does it mean to mourn? Well, the verb, the word here means to experience sadness as a result of some condition or circumstance. Be sad, grieve, mourn, to engage in mourning for one who is dead, ordinarily versus traditional rites, mourn over, or to mourn over someone or grieve over someone or sorrow over someone who is in habitual habit of sin and self-destruction. That's the idea of this verb. What does it mean to be puffed up? It means to cause one to have an exaggerated self-conception. Verse 2 tells us that a response of mourning or sorrow over sin will be a cause for the sinner to be removed and hopefully restored. Notice this passive voice here. You see that? He says, specifically for a deed, he says, and have not rather mourned so that, so the result of their mourning would be that he who has done this deed might be taken away from among you. So this is kind of like your classic Ryan hit the ball. That's an active verb. Who's the subject? Ryan. Ryan hit the ball. So if I said, who hit the ball? You'd say, Ryan hit the ball. That's what we call an active verb. But if I said, the ball was hit. Who hit the ball? I don't know who hit the ball, but the ball was definitely hit. Action happened, happened to the ball. And so here he is being very careful to say, look, if you have the right attitude towards sin, then God is going to take care of the results. Do you see that? A lot of times Christians do this wrong in churches and thus get a bad reputation. And there's two ways to do this wrong. The one way is what Paul is dealing with is to ignore it, to let it keep going, and then to brag about it. Yeah, we got this thing going on around. Aren't we so loving to tolerate what's going on in this situation in our church? Wrong attitude. That's what was happening. Or the other attitude is, well, we are Holy, and you are not. So we are going to tell you how unholy and awful you are every chance we get. We're going to publicly proclaim your unholy awfulness. We're going to tell the community about your unholy awfulness. We're going to be the most vindictive, cutting, biting, hateful, horrible people on planet Earth because Jesus tells us to love you. Irony there, right? I was being facetious. But Jesus does say, by this shall all men know that you are my disciples if you love one another. So how could we have those two extremes, right? And the answer is when we have the right attitude of mourning versus arrogance. Now, Jesus clarifies this in the Beatitudes. In his Sermon on the Mount, he says that mourning for sin is a necessary step for repentance. In other words, you must properly understand what sin means for you and for others before you can truly sorrow over it. All right, now there are some kids in here today, and there's some grown-up kids that have heard me preach at Vacation Bible School and work with Children's Ministries for decades. So let's kind of just step back and say, well, first of all, why would we mourn over sin? What in the world is sin anyway? Well, if you want to do it with me, you can. What is sin? Think, say, or do that breaks God's law. Sin is anything I think, say, or do that breaks God's law. It's anything I think, say, or do that breaks God's law. It's anything I think, say, or do that breaks God's law. It's getting harder for me to do it faster. Apparently, when I was younger, I could do it so fast I couldn't even see my hands move. Hint, hint, hint, right? That's what I told the kids. So you can't even see my hands move. They're like, Pastor Ryan, you didn't move. No, no, you just can't see it. I'm just so fast. Sin is anything I think, say, or do that breaks God's law. And who are sinners? All of us. All means all, and that's all that all means, right? For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. So if everybody's a sinner, and sin is anything I think, say, or do, it can be in my thoughts, attitudes, words, or actions, and all of us are sinners, then what's the big deal? I mean, I'm no different, better, or worse than anybody else, right? Well, that is actually the point. Because God made this world and he made you important and special in this world and he made you, Genesis 1 tells us, so you can have a special relationship and fellowship with him. But Adam, our first representative, who was created sinless and perfect, living in a perfect environment, in a perfect garden, having perfect conversations with the perfect God every single day, day in and day out, eating from perfect trees, living by perfect streams of water, in a perfect environment with a perfect wife. And yet, he violated one command. One tree. The only one in the whole garden. Don't eat this one. Because in the day you eat, you will die. And guess what he does? He eats and he dies. Now, he dies spiritually, he's separated from God instantly, and eventually that spiritual death leads to physical death as well. And so, sin, the Bible says, when it is finished, brings forth death. Death is separation from God. From a physical standpoint, death is physical separation from our body. From a spiritual standpoint, Spiritual death is eternal separation from God. Now why is that the case? Because God is holy, He is distinct, unique, separate from sin, He is righteous, just, merciful, and love, and He cannot tolerate sin, nor will He overlook sin. But, we are sinners. If we were created to have perfect fellowship and perfect relationship with Him, but our fellowship and relationship was broken because of sin, what can we do? Well, we're in trouble, because we can't do anything about it. There are none righteous, not even one. All of our works are as filthy rags. We can't earn God's love. We can't do anything to erase our sin debt. Every time we think we can, we've actually just heaped more sin on the plate. We are absolutely incapable of creating a righteous standard that will meet up to God's perfect standard. And God knew that. So from the very beginning, after Adam and Eve sin, He comes and talks to them after they hide, after they clothe themselves, they sew together leaves to try to make themselves look righteous before God. Look, we covered ourselves up, God. and he has to take those dirty rags off and he has to put on the skin of an animal which required blood to be shed and thus we have the prophecy God would one day send a seed that would be a human being in the likeness of Adam and Eve who would crush the serpent's head but himself his heel would be bruised and that is the big picture of the Bible. So what does God do? Well, we find as the story of the Bible progresses, because all of us are sinners and we're all separated from God and nothing we can do can earn favor with God, nothing can bring us closer to God, we're all in a pickle, so to speak. So what he does is, he sends a second Adam. But this time, just like Adam who was originally sinless, this second Adam would also be sinless, Isaiah 7.14, And the virgin shall conceive, and shall bring forth a son, and he shall call his name Jesus, or Emmanuel, meaning God with us. And the government shall be upon his shoulder, Isaiah 9.6, right? and he shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. So this human seed would also be not just fully human, but fully God, the Wonder Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. And we just celebrated that at Christmas time, didn't we? Wasn't that awesome? Isn't that fun? To celebrate the birth of the coming Savior who is both fully God and fully man. So God would send Jesus And Jesus, who would be called the Lamb of God, would come to take away the sin of the world. And remember, sin is anything I think, say, or do that breaks God's law. Sin separates me from God spiritually, and eventually, unless I get reconciled to God through His gift of eternal life, then I will be separated permanently from Him in all eternity. But God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, Jesus, that whoever believes in Him, unlimited, every human being, whoever believes in Him, should not perish, but have everlasting life. And so, friends, the Gospel is the good news because there was bad news. All mankind, are sinners. All are separated from God. But in the fullness of time, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to save all those who are under the law. He came to save you. He came to save me. He came to save your friends, your coworkers, your neighbors, your family. He came to save that which was lost. That's good news. That's the gospel. Now, if we understand what sin is, sin separates me from God. Sin keeps me from a God who loves me and made me special and made me on purpose, and that sin will ultimately separate me from God forever in a real place of suffering. We really understand what sin is and what it does, then we're gonna be mournful over it. We're not gonna brag about it. We're not gonna say, well, we're so loving, we tolerate this. No, we're gonna say, no, no, no, we need to be sorrowful over this. This is a person that is being consumed by what he thinks is going to satisfy him. And by the way, because we're kind of going through this passage, the whole section at once, I want us to think about this idea of mourning versus arrogance. I want you to scroll down in your Bibles to verses 9 through 12. In 9, 10, and 11, he's going to deal with the same issue, but on a broader scope. Here in the first eight verses, he's dealing with a specific situation where this guy is sleeping with his stepmom. Bad, bad problem, okay? But in verses 9, 10, and 11, he's going to deal with similar hearted sins, similar sin issues that have the same root issue. Unless you say, well, I've never done that. I would never do that. That person's, man, he's wicked. I'm not like that, right? No, no. He's going to now target sins that all people have struggled with at some point in time, no doubt. And notice what he says. He says, verse 9, I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. The word there is pornos, people who practice self-gratification, sexual immorality in all forms. It's a very broad word. Obviously, you probably could understand or hear some English words we get from that. Pornography, shortened porn. He says, don't associate with pornos. sexually immoral people, yet I certainly didn't mean with the sexually immoral people of this world or with covetous or extortioners, idolaters, since that would mean going out of the world. So he's saying, look, I'm talking about people that are actually in the church, but still identified by these practices. He's saying, not people that are not part of the church family, because if I told you to separate from them, you'd have to leave the world. Because guess what? All of us are sinners. Every single person on planet Earth. So if you're going to separate from all people that practice these things, you're not going to have any friends. There's going to be nobody to associate with. So he's literally dealing with people that are in the church. And he says, but now I've written you not to keep company with anyone named a brother. Do you see what he's saying? Someone who says, I'm a believer, but lives habitually, continually in these self-gratifying practices. Well, what are some of these self-gratifying practices beyond sexual immorality? I mean, that one's kind of a no-brainer, right? By the way, I'm going to say this. The Bible says in Hebrews 13, 5, marriage is honorable in all, and the bed is undefiled. but fornicators and adulterers God will judge." That's in keeping with what Paul is actually saying. God is the ultimate judge. And what you sow, you will reap. But if you wait to do things God's way, then God will bless and sustain and encourage, right? And so he goes on to say here, some of these are sexually immoral. He uses the same word, covetous. Well, the word covetous here is someone who is greedy. It means greedy, someone who wants something that doesn't belong to them. By the way, what is at the heart of immorality? Fornication, porn. I want something that doesn't belong to me because I think that thing that doesn't belong to me will make me happier, more fulfilled. It's the same heart problem with a different manifestation as covetousness. What's the next word? He says, those who are covetous. He says, idolater. Well, what is an idolater? Someone who worships anybody or attempts to manipulate for the purpose of worshiping anyone or anything other than God. The great American dollar. We worship our careers and our jobs, don't we? Do you know Americans work on average 53 hours a week? We are the most overworked nation on planet Earth. We're also among the top 1% of the world's wealthiest people on planet Earth. 97% of Americans are richer than planet Earth. 97%. So the top three of the world's population is poorer than most Americans, even we Americans who are in poverty, according to the American standard. And the point is, when we work to satisfy and we worship the idol of stuff and things and money and job, anything that we receive gratification from other than God is idolatry. And he goes on to say, or a reviler. Now, this is an interesting word. This actually has the idea of abusive, someone who's an abuser. And it's a broad word, so it can, in this context of sexual immorality, could be someone who is sexually abusive. Or it could be someone who is an angry and violent, abusive physically person or verbally person. All right? That describes a major pandemic in the world today. And then he goes on to say a drunkard. And this is specifically someone who is constantly and continually, habitually getting drunk with alcohol, whether it be one day a week, three days a week, five days a week, once a month, five times a month, they're habitually a drunkard, being drunk with alcohol. Or this work also has the connotation of anybody who is consumed with or addicted to any substance that is controlling, any life-dominating substance. pain pills, surgeries, beauty products, coffee. I said it. And then he says, or an extortioner. And the word extortion has the idea of a robber, someone who skillfully and willfully manipulates you out of something that you need to provide your daily needs. The get-rich-quick schemes. By the way, if you want to watch some really comical YouTube videos, I promise this is on track. There's a guy who records himself with voice modulators scamming scammers. And it is absolutely hilarious. He will get these guys that are saying, I want you to buy me this $500 gift card, but don't redeem it. Just give me the gift card. You don't redeem it. And he's got a couple of reels where he's condensed it down to like five minute conversation with the scammers. And you just sit there and you laugh. And you laugh because you realize this scammer got what he really deserves. He was taken off the market. from scamming people that really think that they're helping somebody. And that's what an extortioner does. An extortioner is someone who takes advantage of a vulnerable person who cares about other people for their own advantage. Now, he lumps all of those together in the same group as the guy who's sleeping with his stepmother. We in our minds are like, sleeping with my stepmom is like, you know, there's really horrible and gross, and then there's like outer solar system gross, right? Right? That's where we're like, we're all like, okay, good, pastor's preaching on that, I'm good. I've never done that, I'm never gonna do that, right? But all of a sudden, he just brings it right back down. And the point is this, we're not supposed to be grading sin We're supposed to be understanding that when we know how bad sin is, we should respond in the right way. So what is the right response? We are grieved over sin, so much so that we care enough about our brother to go rescue him. We care enough about our sister to go rescue her. We care enough about them to point out their need and come alongside them and help them in the process of restoration. That's what Matthew 18 told us, right? We go to them one-on-one, we take two or three, we take some leadership, and then if they don't respond to any of those, They're choosing to reject the gospel and reject the Savior, and we bring them to the whole church and say, hey, everybody, go after this person, love on them, help them, care for them, restore them, and if they keep pushing you away, what are they saying? Look, I don't belong to Jesus. He's not my Lord. And I don't belong to you because I don't believe what you believe. You see the passive nature of this? God will be the one to separate them. Does that make sense? With proper protective attitude, we're not the ones that's cutting people off. God is the one, not us. So what we see here then is the second response, not just a response of mourning versus arrogance, but a response of disassociation versus association. Now, what he's doing here with this idea is actually really interesting. This, he went from positive to negative in the first one, this time negative to positive. So he says, I wrote to you, verse nine, in my epistle, not to keep company. So you see the not to, whereas the first one was mourn, that's a positive thing, be sad for. And don't tolerate, don't be arrogant. This one was don't keep company, right? And the idea of keeping company means to associate. It means to mingle with, spend lots of time with. Now Paul would also make this point in chapter 15 verse 33 when he would say that evil companions corrupt good morals. The reason we are told not to keep company with someone in brazen sin is because we either become like them or we are like them. Paul makes it clear that we are talking about people who call themselves and are called by others, brothers. Therefore, they should be living distinctly like brothers. Paul's already told us that as believers, our bodies are the dwelling place of God. So for truly his, we cannot closely align ourselves with those who can confess and profess Jesus. Jesus put it this way in John 15, I am the vine and you are the branches. And you must abide in me. Anyone who does not abide in me, the father will prune. Now, I am not a horticulturist. If you talk to my family, I do not know what's wrong with my thumbs, but everything my thumbs touch that's supposed to grow dies. It just does. I have no idea why. We get these beautiful orchids. My wife is a teacher, music teacher, kindergarten. Somebody gave her this beautiful orchid. She got a beautiful one last year. Ask me where it is. I could not keep it alive. I followed the instructions to the T. I fed it the food appropriately. I stuck it in front of the window appropriately. I took it outside when it was supposed to be, brought it in. I killed it. I do not know how to keep living things alive. That is plants, that is. People were good, but plants, not a good thing for me. I don't know what my problem is, but for whatever reason, I kill plants. And the idea, though, is Sometimes on the vine, this is what I understand about vines, these little sucker shoots, they're called that, they actually come out and they look like they're going to grow into a cluster of grapes, but they just sit there and grow into a cluster of leaves. And they take all the nourishment away from the cluster of grapes. And if you don't clip those sucker plants off at the appropriate time during the year, then your vines are going to either yield really small grapes that are bitter and disgusting, or none at all, because it's going to be full of sucker plants, sucker shoots. And Paul is actually saying he's using this idea not to keep company, not to associate. He's connecting it with the idea of the body of Christ is an organic living body and we need to let God do His pruning work and that means sometimes Part of the pruning is to say, wait a second, this lifestyle that's happening over here, this is not healthy or helpful. I need to go talk to my brother and I need to help him. Hey, I've struggled with sin before. And I had someone come up next to me and say, hey, you know, Ryan, this isn't right, but I can help you in this area, right? And I'm going to come alongside and I'm going to encourage them. I'm going to pray for them. I'm going to try to help them. And then when they start pushing away and saying, nope, I'm not interested, nope, I'm real happy with my sin. I like what I'm doing, get away, I don't want you, I don't want your help. Now, okay, well maybe I need to get another person involved and we can pray with them and we can pray over them and we can help them in that way. And then maybe I can get a pastor involved. And again, the whole point here is for restoration. We say, how do you know that? Well, again, look at verse 5. So that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. The whole point of this is to bring salvation, spiritual restoration. All right, now, I got to talk about the albatross in the room. What in the world does this deliver him to Satan mean? Right? Because some of you are like, whoa, that sounds like a cultish, like, you know, we having like seances and delivering people over to the enemy. What's going on here? Like, this is weird. Well, let's think about this for a second. Do we have an instance in the Old Testament where Satan had full control and autonomy over the circumstances of a believer's life? I hear a couple people whispering, and you're absolutely correct. Job. Job, by the way, did not know that he was stuck between the hammer and the anvil. He had no clue. In fact, we still to this day do not know who wrote the book of Job. It may not have been Job. We just don't know. Job had no idea that the accuser of the brethren walks about the earth seeking to accuse the righteous day and night, and then had to give an account of God before God, and God is like, hey, Satan. See my dude? He's my guy. Job, down there? There's nobody like him on planet Earth. And Satan's like, well, that's just because you put a hedge of protection about him. He's like, all right, take the hedge away. Just don't take his life, take his wealth. So he takes all of his wealth. Does Job curse God and die? Nope. Satan comes back up and he's like, well, that's because you're not letting me touch his body. He's like, all right, go ahead, touch his body. So he has boils from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet. His family's dead. They've abandoned him. His wife is basically saying, just curse God and die already. You know, he's literally sitting in sackcloth and ashes. He's scraping the boils and the seeping wounds from his body with a piece of clay. I mean, we're talking about as bad as it gets. And he doesn't curse God and die. Now, ultimately, what happens to Job? He does have a confrontation with God, and God doesn't answer his why question, which, by the way, when you're going through rough circumstances, the why question is never the right question. It just isn't. You're never going to get that answer, are you, Nick? This is not happening. I remember asking that question when my 14-year-old brother passed away. I remember asking that question when my mom died suddenly while I was on the phone with her. I have an heart attack. Pretty rough. Not a fun experience. Don't like those experiences in my life. But the why question is not the right question. The right question is, what would you like me to do, God? How would you like me to respond? And Job finally gets that because he gets to interview God and God's like, hey, Job, where were you when I made the world? Where were you when I set the Pleiades in the heavens? Where were you when I created Leviathan in the great deep who breathes fire out of his belly and nobody can tame or catch with a hook? By the way, I have no idea what dinosaur that was, but it was probably a super creepy one. The point is simply this. He's like, he doesn't answer his question. And so what I'm getting at here is this delivering this one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh is literally saying, give the guy what he wants. Return him back to the God little g of this world. Take him outside the protective sphere of the church family that is under the blood of Jesus Christ, protected by the love of God. and let him have what he wants. He can go outside the church, he doesn't have to be a member of the church anymore. If he says he's a follower of Christ and he leaves the church because essentially you're not tolerating this situation, and he is a follower of Christ, then guess what's going to happen? His soul is going to be saved and he's going to be restored to fellowship. Now, I am happy to report, if we were to look at 2 Corinthians, we will find that this man actually does repent. he does get restored to fellowship. So they listened and they handled this situation properly. But the rest of the ones here, how do we deal with this then? Because he says, literally, don't associate with them. This is a close association. And then don't even eat with them. So I'm going to wrap it up here momentarily with some actions that we're to have. So we have two actions, expelling versus tolerating. and letting God be judge versus you being judge. These are the two actions. We dealt with the attitudes. The attitudes, of course, were mourning versus arrogance, disassociation versus association. So we're not going to associate. In other words, we're going to say, look, you say you're a believer, but believers associate with Jesus. Believers claim Jesus is Lord. Believers say, Jesus has washed me from my sins. I was this, but I no longer am this. And he's going to talk about that later on in the book as well, and in 2 Corinthians. Unbelievers identify with all of their sexual and moral practices. Believers just say, hey, look, I used to be like that, but now I'm Christian. Now I'm in Christ. Disassociation versus association. And then finally, the two actions we're supposed to take. Expelling versus tolerating. Notice the verbs here with expelling versus tolerating. Get rid of, he says. It's mentioned in the ex-general comments I mentioned above. The explanation, the expulsion is active and passive in the same breath. It is an action of God as a result of the proper attitude from us. The verbs that we see are to deliver, to purge, hand over or to entrust someone or to clean out and get rid of. So we deliver, that is we hand over or entrust to someone. We clean out, that is we purge or we get rid of. We expel, we deliver over to someone. By the way, who do we deliver over? To God who is the judge. Ultimately, when you're pushing someone outside of the church, who are you giving them over to? God, who is the big G over the little g, Satan, who is the little g over this world. Right? Scripture teaches that principle. So what you're actually saying is you and I are not condemning this person. We're delivering them over to what they want. They don't want to be part of God's people, so we're letting them have what they want. They're just going to go back into the secular world and live just like everybody else does, live under the principles of the wicked tax master, Satan himself. And he is cruel, by the way. And we're ultimately going to let God be his judge, not us. And so, What we find here is our patient God often waits for us to properly respond to the circumstances that He allows in our lives before He takes the action of purging and restoring. Have you ever noticed that? In your own life, have you noticed how patient God is toward you? He's long-suffering toward us, not willing that any of us should perish, but that all of us should come to repentance. How many years have you struggled with that pet sin that you keep hiding in the closet, my friend? stroking that attitude of rebellion against God and keeping it all to yourself. And yet God is patiently, faithfully, regularly come to you and say, no, I love you, my child. Don't give into that. Don't keep doing that. That's going to hurt. It's not worth it. It's going to have consequences far greater than you want. And it's going to keep you longer than you want to stay. And it isn't going to satisfy. See, God has a long-suffering, patient attitude toward us. And when we expel versus tolerate, and we let God be judge instead of us being judge, we have to have the same patient love for others that God does. Listen to what God says about a similar topic in Proverbs. Can a man take fire to his bosom and his clothes not be burned? Can one walk on hot coals and his feet not be seared? What are the answers to that question? No, you know, unless you're one of those fire coal walkers that have, you know, I don't even know how they do it. I guess they walk really fast or whatever. Maybe they've got calluses on their feet, you know, a little bit of both, right? They burn the nerves. Yeah, they now have no feeling in their feet. So their feet could just be in fuego, like, you know, and just they'd feel it somewhere at some point. They've so built up a tolerance to the heat that it no longer feels hot. And that's the point. When we sin, we do not win, we lose. If you build up a tolerance to sin, you become calloused towards sin, and sin, when it is finished, brings forth death. That's what the Bible says. And so, he says in verse 29, so is he who goes to his neighbor's wife, whoever touches her shall not be innocent. Solomon, he got this right, sexual immorality leads to incredibly deep consequences. And that's what he saw, that's what Paul saw here in this text. We're told that not tolerating or associating with someone who is unrepentantly, habitually in sin and still claims to be a Christian includes not sharing the most basic pleasure, a nourishing meal. Now, this definitely implies not letting them take the Lord's Supper with the church, right? Because that's essentially saying, look, I'm actually part of the body of Christ and thus I'm a part of your body. And we're saying, look, not if you're habitually practicing this lifestyle, because this is a lifestyle that is contra-Christian. It's anti-Christ, anti-Christian. So let God be judge versus you be judge. Listen, as we think about this, the word judge means to make a judgment based on taking various factors into account. To judge, to think, to consider. Paul explains why judgment must fall on those within the church, with two rhetorical questions. You see that in verse 9 and 10. Excuse me, verse 12. For what have I to do with judging those who are outside? Do you not judge those who are on the inside? So his rhetorical question is, God judges those who are outside. The sin of unbelievers will not go unchecked. God will sovereignly discipline unbelievers in the present and also in the future. And that the church is the channel through which believers are called to account for high-handed sin. And so he's basically asking these rhetorical questions. Look, God is the ultimate judge, not us. I don't have time to take us to lots of other passages, but the scripture is very clear. When we judge or observe sin in someone's life, we do so based on the righteous standard of God, but we always do that humbly for the purpose of helping them grow in grace, not condemning them. Right? Because Scripture clearly says, Romans 8, 1, there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ. If you're truly a believer in Christ, then you're pursuing those who say they're believers in Christ, and we're not doing it in a condemnatory manner. We're doing it in Christian love to see them saved from sin. James actually ends his gospel that way. He basically says in James chapter 5, at the very last line of his epistle, He says, look, if you save someone from sin, or if you restore someone, you actually save them eternally. This is an eternal salvation we're seeking, not just a physical, temporal one. And so he says that we are to let God be the judge and not us. So the right attitude towards sin, the right perspective towards sin, will give us a right attitude and a right action or response to sin in our lives. So as we close our account this morning, as we've walked through this text, we've heard that letting the gospel protect means having the right perspective about sin for the right response toward it. We noted that God wants you to protect his church with the right attitude and actions. So first of all, let me ask you this question as believers today. All of us, and some of you I don't know, and again, thank you for visiting with us today. hammer of a message, but all of you that I know have professed Christ as Savior to my knowledge. I don't know what's in your heart. I assume the best of each and every one of you. You know that. That's my personality. What you see is what you get. I love you for who you are, the way you are, quirks and all, because you love me back the same way. God knows your heart. If there's something that's going on in your life that you need God's gracious help for, can I say your church loves you, your pastor loves you, we're here for you, we wanna help you, we wanna restore you. If you have a life dominating issue that is just pulling you down and you can't get victory out and you've tried all by yourself for years and years and years, whether it be substance abuse, whether it be living in an abusive situation verbally or physically, whether it be dealing with a past sin that was heaped on you and having a bitter spirit because you don't know how to walk through proper forgiveness, even if it wasn't earned, right? Whatever it might be, if there's a life-dominating issue, God is calling you today because he put you here today. He's calling you today to get help. And we're here to help. We're here for you. We are like you. We struggle with the same flesh you struggle with. We've struggled with bitterness and anger. We've struggled with sin issues. We've struggled with thoughts, words, and actions that break God's law, just like you. And friend, if you're a believer today and there's something that you just haven't been able to get victory over, God is calling you to get help. We want you to get help. But if you're sitting here today and you say, yeah, I got some of these things in my life, but I don't want what you're talking about. Then friend, can I say, God put you here for one reason and one alone. Today is the day of salvation. Behold, now is the accepted time. Because King Jesus is coming soon. And as I preached a couple of weeks ago in Matthew 25, when he comes the second time, there will be no other opportunity. He's going to separate those that are His from those that aren't, and those that aren't are immediately going to be eternally separated from God. And that is a scary thing. Jonathan Edwards preached a sermon called Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God. And I don't think he titled it well, because I think it's more like Sinners in the Hand of a Loving God that sent His one and only Son who was abused, despised, spit upon, ridiculed, rejected, crucified, and resurrected and coming again. If they would do that to God's own son, and they're unrepentant to the end, there is no hope. My friend, there's hope today, because you're still here. God calls you to repentance and eternal life. If you're here today and you know someone who is walking through a disturbing time and God put them on your heart this morning, why don't you give them a call, send them a text, shoot them a private message, Facebook, Instagram, whatever your social media post of choice is, and say, hey, look, God put you on my heart today. Let's do lunch, let's get together, let's see where you are. Now, obviously, if they're in a hardened state, we wanna obey scripture and we're not gonna fellowship closely, But that's talking about someone who's gone through the far, long, distant process that takes a long time and has rejected God over and over and over and over and over habitually. Why don't you get with them and say, hey, I'm praying for you. And see if you can't be a gracious restorer, a lover, to share the love of Jesus for them. That's what God wants. Because God wants you to protect his church with the right attitude and the right actions. Let's pray.